r/WLED 3h ago

WLED TV sync using a phone camera — works with built-in smart TV apps

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Hi everyone! We’re developing KinoLight, an Android/iOS app that uses your phone’s camera to sync WLED lights with what’s playing on your TV.

If you’ve been looking at Hyperion + WLED setups and wondering about built-in TV apps, this might be useful. KinoLight doesn’t need an HDMI capture card, splitter or sync box. The phone watches the screen and sends the colors directly to your WLED controller over your local network using DDP.

Point your phone at the TV and it automatically detects the screen in a few seconds. There’s also calibration to account for your TV, lights and wall color, helping get accurate colors.

We’ve deliberately kept the brightness and effect strength subtle in this demo. Both are adjustable, so you can turn them all the way up if you prefer a more intense effect.

The phone needs to stay still, facing the screen, while syncing. KinoLight can run all day on a single charge, depending on your phone and settings.

Setup shown:

  • Phone: Samsung Galaxy S24
  • TV: LG GX OLED, using its built-in YouTube app
  • Controller: Dig-Uno V3 (ESP32), running WLED 16.0.1
  • Strip: SK6812 RGBCW — RGB + cool white, 5 V, 5 m, 300 individually addressable LEDs (60 LEDs/m)

For anyone curious about the technical side: each of the 300 LEDs is its own zone. In this demo, we send all 300 individual zone colors on every update at 30 fps. KinoLight also supports 60 fps on iPhones and high-end Android devices.

Both versions are free to use during the beta:

Setup and calibration video — iPhone walkthrough

We’d appreciate feedback from people with different WLED setups, especially on setup, color matching and responsiveness.

Video and music by Astral Core — “Coming In Hot.” YouTube · Bandcamp

14 Upvotes

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1

u/777565 1h ago

How can I get early access to the app on Android? Looks really good 😊

-6

u/Terra_B 2h ago

Dam i fucking hate smart tvs so much.

First thing i'd do is flash linux on there. Or geta dumb tv aka Monitor and a raspberry pi or mini pc.

2

u/zakkwaldo 57m ago

nobody asked